Latest stories
Six Weeks of Homesick Calls, Then She Hung Up
A father flew home to Delhi from a Swiss mountain, leaving his fourteen-year-old at Aiglon. The phone started ringing before his dinner arrived.
Latest stories
A Month at the Préfecture, Fifteen Minutes With the Préfet
A new pupil at the École alsacienne needed a visa to join her class in Florence, and the French state kept asking for one more document.
Three Days on an Old Barge, and the Mattress Won
The International School of Amsterdam sends Grade 10 sailing on a flat-bottomed barge and calls it the Challenge Trip. One tenth-grader found the challenge after dark.
Boarding Three Streets From Home, Then Inspecting Tomorrow
In post-war Cetinje, a nursing student lived three streets from the medical school and boarded anyway. The rules were not interested in the view.
Half a Riksi to Learn Writing, Gentlemen’s Letters Not Included
In Pietari Päivärinta’s 1877 memoir, a lodger’s son in rural Finland is promised a writing lesson with a pass mark, and asks the one question his teacher cannot answer.
An 1877 Schoolboy Complains, and Gets the Good Old Days
In 1877 a pupil at the Lycée Henri-IV wrote a comic poem in which a sleepless boarder files a complaint against his century. A dream takes him up on it.
Father Played Bellman, and Nobody Told the Children
In her memoir of Mårbacka, Selma Lagerlöf remembers the evenings her father sat at the piano and called the children to sing. Nobody ever told them how it sounded.
Every Teacher Had to Sign Before Saturday in Zug
At Institut Montana on the Zugerberg, a boarder who wanted to go down the mountain on a Saturday needed a slip signed by his teachers. One of its former pupils remembers what that took.
Carl Nielsen Trod on a Foot and Became a General
In his 1927 memoir of a Funen childhood, the composer Carl Nielsen recalls the road war between two villages, a scarf that made him look like Napoleon, and a battle plan that lasted seconds.
Nine Years Teaching, Then a Desk at the Back
A teacher in Bucharest left her job to sit beside her autistic son in eighth grade. The class she had once taught had other plans for her.
He Passed the Entrance Exam. Then Came the Wig.
In autumn 1843 a country boy passed the entrance examination at Schulpforta and shook hands with every teacher. That evening he was told there was one more test, in singing.
Thirty-Nine First-Graders Turned Up at Their Teacher’s Wedding
In the 1980s a young substitute was sent to cover a first-grade class for a fortnight. The children, and then their parents, decided he was staying.
Eighteen Pupils, No Abacus, and a Pocketful of Chestnuts
In the 1960s a twenty-year-old teacher fresh from college in Skopje took charge of a one-room school in a mountain village. Her method book assumed an abacus.